


let us live (and let us love)

by mapped



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, F/M, M/M, Miranda Lives AU, Multi, Non-Sexual Bondage, Non-Sexual Kink, Polyamory, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 23:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12376743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: Miranda and Thomas and James, reunited and beginning the rest of their lives together.





	let us live (and let us love)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scrapbullet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrapbullet/gifts).



> Happy belated birthday, Scrap! <3 I really hope you enjoy this. If you like, you can imagine this taking place after your [(but i still see you) in the light](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10863909)? :')
> 
> Warning: There are some references to suicidal thoughts in this fic.

Flour dusts James’ cheekbones and the tip of his nose; it catches in the fine hairs on his forearms, exposed by rolled-up sleeves. His hair is escaping from its tie, strands of it wispy and floating away in the air like dreams fleeing one’s mind at first light. The bones of his knuckles and his wrist captivate and entrance, prominent one moment and indistinct the next, as he sinks his fingers and then the heels of his palms into the dough, rolling and kneading.

He cracks eggs neatly on the rim of a bowl, one and another and another… Thomas counts ten in all. Watching the egg yolk slide golden and whole and perfect from the broken cradle of the shell satisfies something in the pit of Thomas’ stomach every time.

“You know, you could consider selling your cakes. I’m sure they’d be very popular.”

Thomas looks up. Miranda has drifted into the room, her hair loose and shining; it always puts Thomas in mind of a harpsichord with its raised lid elegantly slanting, the way she has it gathered and falling over one of her shoulders. James picks up a jar from the table and holds it out to her, and she bends her head slightly to sniff at it.

“Rose-water,” she sighs, happily. Thomas wants to ask James to offer it to him too so he can smell it, even though he has been content up till now simply to watch, and he thinks he has detected a hint of the sweet fragrance in the air, but he cannot tell whether that is Miranda or the rose-water.

Miranda takes the jar from James, though, and she transfers it to Thomas’ hand, as if reading his thoughts. The jar is sticky with James’ handprint of buttery flour. Thomas shuts his eyes and lifts it to his nose and inhales: a shy summer blooms before him in a subtle sweep of pink petals, and the delicate joy of it pricks at the corners of his eyes. 

He blinks, rubbing his thumb over the smear of flour on the jar. “Was it Emperor Elagabalus who smothered his guests in rose petals?”

“Yes, dear,” Miranda answers. “Although I don’t think the _History_ specifies rose petals. It was violets, wasn’t it?”

“Violets and other flowers.” James takes up a whisk and starts beating the eggs so fiercely one wonders whether he could have been half as ferocious as a pirate.

“I thought it was roses.” Thomas stares at the blur of James’ hand. He had been so sure it was roses, the profusion of pink so vividly pictured. “Never mind.” James’ hand stills, and Thomas opens his mouth again: “It would be an exquisite way to go though, wouldn’t it?”

“Death by roses?” James asks.

Thomas hums. “Death by roses.”

James snorts. He looks at Thomas, then at Miranda, then at Thomas. “Yes, well, there are certainly plenty of worse ways.”

“I’d love to die in a bed of roses,” Thomas says. “To be blanketed in them, to be suffocated by a plush pillow of petals.”

“Thomas,” James says, and his voice cracks like eggshell. Thomas shivers. _God_ , the decadence of such a death, the sheer mad luxury of it, the brazen wealth of a million petals pouring from the ceiling. What a welcome contrast it would be to all the ways Death has tried to come for him in the past decade, dressed in grey rags, pitiful and poor.

Miranda’s hand is on his cheek, warm and precious. “I must confess,” she says, quietly, confidentially, even though she is still speaking at a volume that James would be able to hear, “there were times when such an impossible death would have appealed to me too. The opulence of it, the _colour_! I had a dream once that I was buried alive in a mound of my old London dresses, all this frothy lace and dazzling satin piled high and heavy on top of me. I woke up and thought it a rather good dream.”

Miranda grins, and Thomas grins back easily, turning his face to nuzzle Miranda’s palm. He knew Miranda would understand. When he looks back, horror is dissipating from James’ face and yielding to reluctant introspection, his jaw going from slack to tense as he looks inside of himself and finds an undeniable reflection of his lovers’ melancholy. “I would still rather have died at sea,” he says, softly.

“But we are all here now,” Miranda says, just as soft. She clasps Thomas’ hand; hers is dry and calloused, not at all the dainty lady’s hand that Thomas had held every day in London. He squeezes her fingers tight, and Miranda reaches out for James’ hand, too. 

They are all here now, and Thomas would rather die in a bed with the two of them, roses or no.

* * *

Miranda’s bare skin is pale as the pristine pages of a new journal; under the water her body shimmers, unreal. He touches her clavicles; they are hard, existent. He keeps his hand there, and Miranda meets his gaze, direct and reassuring.

There is a plash and the scent of roses fills the air, summer-sweet and enamouring. Thomas turns to see James with a jug, emptying it into the tub. James kneels on the other side, a bar of soap in his hand, lathering Miranda’s hair. Thomas observes the care with which James holds each handful of tresses and applies the soap. 

He looks away and closes his eyes. He is in an English garden, his neck hot and sweating under the constriction of a cravat. The flowers are numerous and bursting, and there are more colours than could possibly exist in the world. So many flowers he cannot name, but he knows the roses, their bold pink and their dark thorns. He has never yet turned soil, never sown the earth.

“It’s your birthday soon, do you remember?”

Thomas opens his eyes. He is in a room with Miranda and James. Miranda’s hair is a cloud of suds, and her body is submerged in a plain wooden tub; a scattering of rose petals bob around on the surface of the water. Thomas wishes that he could be shrunken to a miniature size and carried on a rose petal as though it were a boat, and Miranda would be a mountainous island rising up out of the ocean, her giant body the rock of his entire world.

“Is it?” he murmurs. He doesn’t remember.

“Do _you_ remember when you were born?” Miranda asks, tilting her chin in James’ direction.

“No, I must have been too young to remember that.” Thomas is glad he catches the twitch in the corner of James’ mouth, that adorable expression James wears when he’s being droll.

Miranda smiles and shoves at James’ shoulder, leaving a translucent wet patch on James’ shirt. “You know what I mean,” she says.

“I was never told my birthday,” James says with a shrug. “Birthdays are the amusement of the nobility, surely.”

Thomas says, “You spent years together and you’ve never thought to ask James this before?”

Miranda and James glance at one another like two hapless thieves who each refuse to give up the other when confronted by the law, and Thomas adds, “That makes me feel _much_ better that I wouldn’t ever again have thought of birthdays, mine or anyone else’s, if you hadn’t brought up the subject.”

Miranda grasps his hand where it still lingers on her clavicles, and she raises it to her lips and kisses his knuckles. “We shall throw a feast,” she declares. “For all the birthdays we have left uncelebrated.”

“And James will bake one of his cakes?” Thomas eyes James hopefully.

James looks at Thomas, long and contented. There are times when his eyes hold shipwrecks, but this is not one of those times; the green sea of them is gentle and giving. “Anything you like,” he says. “Just ask.”

* * *

The sheen of sweat gleams on James’ forehead in the coppery dawn light that peers in through the window. “What were you fighting?” Thomas asks.

“I don’t know,” James growls, his eyes darting around the room. “I don’t know. But I was _losing_. I’m always losing, and everything’s always burning down, coming apart, no matter what I do…” His fingers spasm on the sheets.

Thomas kisses James’ forehead, runs his fingers through James’ sweat-damp hair, wraps an arm around James’ shoulders. He can’t claim he really understands James’ dreams. In his own dreams, there’s no fighting, no struggle. Not even the slimmest chance of winning. He’s already beaten. He doesn’t do anything in his dreams. He simply lets things be done to him.

But he holds James until James stops shaking, because this is not a dream, and and he is able to do _something_.

When James stops shaking, Thomas becomes aware of Miranda’s hand on his back, steadying him all the while, stopping him from shaking too.

James mutters something he doesn’t catch. “What’s that?” he asks.

“Miranda will know how,” James says. His voice is still muffled by Thomas’ shirt, his face half-buried in the fabric.

There’s rustling and movement behind Thomas, the mattress shifting beneath him, and he is still confused. “Miranda will know how what?”

“I’d like you to tie me up,” James says, leaning back so that he now meets Thomas’ eyes and speaks clearly, though the faint flush in his cheeks betrays his embarrassment. “Miranda knows how.”

A coil of rope lands on the bed next to Thomas. He touches it hesitantly, a brief brush of his fingertips. It’s rose-red and silken, glossy, petal-soft. Nothing like anything that’s ever been used to bind him fast. He looks up at Miranda, who is standing at the foot of the bed in her thin white gown. “It is what he needed me to do, sometimes,” she explains, quietly, and bites her lip before admitting: “And what I needed to do, sometimes.”

Thomas considers declining; he knows that if he refuses, James will not ask any more of him. Miranda climbs onto the bed behind him again, her hands massaging his shoulders. “There’s no compulsion,” Miranda murmurs. “I will if you won’t.”

But Thomas picks up the end of the rope, and he _is_ compelled by it, by its satin texture, by its loving colour. This isn’t the sort of rope one would find on the deck of a ship; it isn’t made for labour and use. It’s crafted for touch, for pleasure, for delight.

James is looking at him, his jaw tight with anxiety.

“I will,” Thomas says.

James rushes immediately to pull his nightshirt up over his head; his haste is too wonderful to witness, and Thomas has to duck his head and smile.

James kneels on the bed, his back to Thomas and his hands behind his back, and Thomas listens to Miranda’s instructions, whispered low by his ear. Though complex and intricate, it isn’t as difficult as he was expecting, and when he fumbles, Miranda’s hands are there to guide him. The simple rhythm of passing the rope over and through and around seduces him utterly. He is translating the words of someone he loves into action, because it feels good and right to him.

“How does this feel?” he asks James again and again, his voice nearly extinguished by the tenderness that shivers inside him.

Each time, James replies, “It feels good,” and each time, Thomas is relieved to hear an echo of himself in James’ increasingly weakening voice.

When it is complete, Thomas strokes the rope in awe. On James’ back, it forms a shape that reminds Thomas a little of a chalice, with James’ wrists tied together at the bottom of an open vee. It is a chalice studded all over with the tiny rubies of James’ freckles. “Turn around,” Thomas says, tugging on the cup of the chalice with both hands, a little rough in his eagerness, and he hears James gasp, sees the shudder in his shoulders, before James shuffles around in increments on his knees. The rope loops from his back to his front, intersecting in an X below his neck, wrapping horizontally around his chest and his arms. 

James’ eyelids are drooping, his mouth hanging open. “James?” Thomas says, uncertainly. He lays his palm on James’ cheek; it’s hot.

James’ gaze glides over him like shoes with worn soles slipping over ice. “Thomas,” James says. His voice sounds as if it’s coming from another room.

“Good boy,” Miranda says, moving forward so that she is no longer hidden behind Thomas. She ruffles James’ hair. “Good boy, look at you. You’re beautiful.”

James’ eyes flutter shut as he leans back into Miranda’s touch, and Miranda hooks her finger into the rope that crosses between James’ collarbones. “Doesn’t it feel marvellous to let go and give yourself over to us entirely?” she asks as she pulls on the rope, and James grunts, drowsy and deep. “Doesn’t it feel just _magnificent_ to know that we could do anything to you and you’d suffer it without complaint? Because it wouldn’t be suffering at all, would it, my darling boy?” Her hands smooth down his arms, where the rope is biting into his skin just a little. “Because this is love in its truest form, isn’t it?”

James nods. He’s _gorgeous_ like this, his face wholly unguarded, the pink blush on his neck and on his chest underlined by the red rope, the figure of his torso all the more striking because his hands are tied back. Thomas reaches out nervously, caressing James’ mouth, and dips a finger inside. James sucks it slowly, without thought.

“Good boy,” Thomas says, because it is what Miranda said, and James whines. The sound leaps between Thomas’ ribs and dances upon his heart.

“You don’t have to fight anymore,” Miranda says, her hand sliding behind James’ back, perhaps to pluck at the rope there, or to hold James’ hands. “Thomas and I shall take care of you. We shall all take care of each other.”

Afterwards, when they have loosened all the knots and the rope has slithered to the floor, Thomas and Miranda lie with James between them, and Thomas watches as Miranda strokes James’ hair, tracing the shell of his ear.

“Thank you,” James mumbles, curling towards Miranda.

“You deserve love without suffering,” Miranda says, kissing his hair. “I only wish I knew how to give that to you.”

“We all deserve love without suffering,” Thomas says, and Miranda meets his eyes over the top of James’ head. She drapes her arm across James so that her hand falls on Thomas’ hipbone, and Thomas smiles gratefully at her. “But I hope you know that no amount of suffering makes this less true.”

He kisses James’ nape, soft and careful.

“I know,” James says. No, of course James doesn’t need to be told that. But Thomas needed to say it to himself, rather. It had been hard to remain convinced that his love for James and Miranda was true when he had so often come dangerously close to giving up and taking his own life. But it _was_ true, and it would have been true whether or not he had been able to endure the cruelties that had been inflicted on him. It was, and it _is_ , the truest thing Thomas has ever known.

* * *

Thomas cuts himself another slice of cake, licking the crumbs from his fingers after he puts down the knife. James is gazing at him, desire warm in his eyes.

Thomas sucks his finger clean, deliberate and exaggerated, and smirks at James. “Miranda was right. You really ought to try selling your cakes. We shouldn’t be the only people who get to taste them.”

The night is deep and James’ garland of roses is askew, which only adds to his charm. Thomas spent the afternoon picking the best roses from their garden and weaving three garlands out of them, while James and Miranda busied themselves in the kitchen. He’s quite satisfied with the results. They’re all clothed in linen sheets, in approximation of Roman togas—even Miranda, though respectable women wouldn’t have worn togas in ancient Rome. “I’m no respectable woman, am I?” Miranda had said proudly, mirth glittering in her eyes when Thomas had pointed it out earlier. They have laid out their feast on the floor, and in the absence of dining couches, they recline on their sides, heads propped on elbows, on heaps of cushions and blankets. The dishes are empty now, though, nothing but a meagre quarter of the cake left, and peaches.

“If I became a baker by trade, I would have to get out of bed before dawn,” James says. “And then who would wake you up with kisses in the mornings?”

“Miranda,” Thomas says, grinning, and Miranda chuckles.

“Kisses… and other things,” James amends.

“Hmm, yes, I think we’re all aware that I am _not_ going to wake you up the way James did this morning,” Miranda says. Thomas’ eyes flicker fondly to her. Her garland is still neat, unlike James’. Though the makeshift toga ought to be unimpressive when compared to all the elaborate and expensive dresses Miranda used to wear in London, Thomas has never found her more beautiful. She is more beautiful to him every day that he wakes up and she is there. 

“Will you play us something, my love?” Thomas asks her. “Something cheerful?”

Miranda rises to her feet but then crouches down next to Thomas and kisses him, light and quick. “No, my silly dear, I’ll play something sombre and we’ll sit and cry into our cups and lament that we are none of us the people we used to be.”

Thomas laughs for an alarmingly long time. Miranda has begun playing by the time he stops laughing. He probably ought to worry about what his sense of humour has warped into lately, but he doesn’t care. Even James is smiling.

The music is lilting and lovely. Thomas crawls over to James on his hands and knees and whispers, “Would you believe I’ve been trying all night to remember even a _single_ line of Latin poetry to complement our Roman feast, and I simply cannot—”

“da mi basia mille, deinde centum.” _Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred._ James’ eyes are intense, enraptured and enrapturing; his garland so endearingly lopsided, his mouth so irresistibly tempting. Thomas has never been one to resist temptation, anyway. Temptation promises knowledge, and Thomas always wants to _know_. He pushes James down into the pile of cushions and kisses him, raw and ardent, as if the sun itself burnt between their lips. Golden and whole and perfect, just like an egg yolk.

Thomas lifts his head; his palm is pressed flat against the front of James’ toga, pinning James down, and James’ lips are plump and rich from their kiss, prettier than any rose on his garland.

“dein mille altera, dein secunda centum.” There—! Thomas remembered a line. Whenever he is lost, he only needs to follow James’ lead. He chases James’ lips again, breathless and smiling with triumph. _Then another thousand, then a second hundred._

They drown themselves in kisses as plentiful as rose petals, and Miranda plays on.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and quotes from [Catullus 5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_5). The rose motif was inspired by the painting [_The Roses of Heliogabalus_ by Lawrence Alma-Tadema](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roses_of_Heliogabalus).
> 
> Comments are really appreciated! <3 Come find me on [tumblr](http://reluming.tumblr.com).


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